SDF Academic Research Grants
Stellar Development FoundationStellarOpen
Gifts of up to $150,000 to universities for a year of PI-led research on cryptography, consensus, verification and DeFi.
Time left to apply
99% of the window left, 90 days of 92
Apply to SDF Academic Research Grants
Applications go through airtable.com. Expect a decision in about 12 weeks.
Grant stats
- Grant size
- Up to $150K
- Largest grant
- $150,000
- Paid in
- USD
- Payout
- One payment
- Funding model
- Round
- Fixed application window, reviewed as a batch.
- Typical decision
- 12 weeks
- From submission to an answer
- Round
- Q4 2026 review
- Ecosystem
- Stellar
Checked Oct 1 against 3 sources. Confirm amounts and dates on research.stellar.org before you apply.
About SDF Academic Research Grants
The Stellar Development Foundation funds academic research that advances financial inclusion, fast and cheap cross-border payments, efficient decentralized markets and other useful applications of blockchain technology. Awards go to the university as unrestricted gifts supporting a principal investigator.
Each award is meant to cover one graduate student or postdoc for 12 months, plus reasonable expenses such as conference travel. Budgets can be up to $150,000; SDF says the historical average is about $75,000. You must state that you do not intend to patent the results.
Recent grantees include researchers at Tel Aviv University, Aalto, UC Santa Cruz, NYU and UT Austin, working on SNARK security, threshold cryptography, oblivious primitives and verification of Stellar's consensus protocol.
Resources
Funded before
- Omer Paneth (Tel Aviv University)
- David Wu (UT Austin)
- Lindsey Kuper (UC Santa Cruz)
What they fund
- Privacy-preserving payments and zero-knowledge proofs
- Formal verification of smart contracts and distributed systems
- Byzantine fault tolerant and Sybil-resistant networks, including Federated Byzantine Agreement
- Market mechanisms and scalability for decentralized finance
- Legal, governance and empirical studies of the Stellar network
Who can apply
Tick what applies to you. Saved on this device only.
How applying works
- 1
Write a short proposal
Submit a PDF of at most 3 pages with abstract, PI bio, technical body, budget and a no-patent statement.
- 2
Submit by a deadline
Send it through the Airtable form by March 31, June 30, September 30 or December 31.
- 3
Quarterly review
SDF reviews all proposals received in the quarter together.
- 4
Gift to institution
Funded proposals are paid to the university as an unrestricted gift and listed on the grantees page.
Similar programs
More in ResearchFAQ
- When does SDF Academic Research Grants close?
- Applications close on Dec 31, 90 days from now.
- How much can I get?
- Up to $150K per grant, paid in USD.
- How long until I hear back?
- About 12 weeks from submission to a decision, going by the program's own process or past rounds.
- Where do I apply?
- On the official site, airtable.com. web3grant links there directly and never takes applications itself.
Sources
Checked on Oct 1 against these pages. Programs change often, so confirm the details on research.stellar.org before you apply.